New York Rochester Mission

October 12, 2014April 14, 2015

Week 4, ASL Brighton Area

Oct 12thPrank call?
Had stake conference today and it was huge! There were so many people
there today you couldn’t believe it. Some of the Ward members had to stand out
in the cold and direct people where they could park because it was so
crowded. The great thing about being an ASL missionary is that we got
front row seats because we got to sit with the Deaf crew. While we
were sitting in Stake Conference someone from a restricted number kept
calling us over and over again. When stake conference was over they
were still calling us so we answered and apparently it was some hard
of hearing girl named “Ashley” that wanted to be baptized tomorrow. We
didn’t really know what to tell her so the conversation ended quickly.
Later that day we got a call from the Spanish Elders asking if we knew
a girl named “Linsey” because she wanted all of us to meet at the
church so we could give her a priesthood blessing. After a lot of
confusion and calling this girl back and forth we ended up figuring
out this was the same girl and what they call a “prank anti-Mormon”
who calls the missionaries and tries to waste their time so they won’t
be out doing the Lords work. Super stupid right? Weird thing was she
knew where we lived and our names…

Oct 13thElder Hamula Quorum of the 70’s
Big training meeting today and it was especially awesome because we
got to hear from Elder Hamula from the quorum of the 70. I remember
before my mission sitting through sacrament for an hour and dying of
boredom and now I look forward to sacrament meeting every Sunday, plus
now I can sit through a training session like I did today at the
church for 5 hours straight easily. Elder Hamula did an excellent job
of discussing the importance of the sacrament. When we ask someone to
be baptized we have to teach them that the sacrament is just like
being baptized. For some reason people tend to think that Baptism is
the only way to start fresh but really we get the blessing of becoming
fresh every week through the sacrament! Elder Hamula taught that if
they are not as excited to go to church as they are to be baptized
then you have taught them wrong because church is so important. Later that
night my companion had this impression to go visit this Chinese family
that was in our records who it said hadn’t seen missionaries in over 4
years because they “never answered”. They were on the dropped list
also know as a former investigator but we thought we would just stop
by. As we got to their apartment we rang their doorbell and no one answered.
Disappointed we started walking away and we ran into this Chinese guy
that was out for a walk holding his little baby girl. It was like 9 at
night which is a super weird time to go for a walk but this guy ended
up being the dad of this Chinese family and he didn’t know any English
but he let us into his apartment. We then got to meet Long-Hua Lee
which was his 14 year old son that did know English! Long-Hua is
golden and I know things are going to progress with him.

Oct 14thTunnels
P-day today and today we thought we’d do something different than
Basketball. We decided to go into the city and into this old abandoned
subway station also known as the “Tunnels” and down in the tunnels there
was some of the coolest graffiti I have ever seen. I swear
professional artists get hired to go down there and graffiti. Anyways
after that we got a garbage plate (which is always super delicious),
we visited takeshi then headed to the church to email. Later later
that night we went to the Book of Mormon play again to hand out
pamphlets and stuff and while I did everyone kept coming up to me and
telling me how great of a job I did in the play. I then proceed to
hand them a pass-along card that says “I’m a Mormon, visit
Mormon.org” and they burst out laughing at me. One lady though knew we
were Mormon and couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that we were
“actual Mormons” right outside the Book of Mormon play. I came to the
conclusion that she was very, very drunk.

Oct 15thSolid day
If I’ve learned anything on my mission it’s that the Lord works in
mysterious ways. People would tell me that all the time but I didn’t
really understand what it meant till I got on my mission. For example,
today we had a bunch of plans to meet with people today and they all
bailed on us 😥 but because they bailed on us we got to go tracking
and meet and teach 6 lesson to new people! Actually now that I think
of it one plan that didn’t bail on us today was Long-Hua Lee. I really
do feel a baptism coming up with this kid because he’s so solid and he
loves to read so he read the first couple chapters of nephi already
and he says he likes it a lot. Now we just need to get him to church.
Later that night we got a call to give a blessing to this guy that was
going into an emergency surgery. The man asked me to anoint and for
some reason I felt confident that I could but then when it was time to
say the blessing my mind went blank and I froze. Luckily my companion
helped me out but I decided I’m never doing that again.

Oct 16thYania Gullen
Yania Gullen is a 40 year old Deaf women that has some mental issues,
and one of her favorite things to do is talk with us on the video phone
(vp), problem is she likes it’s a little too much. We’ll come home from
proselyting and have usually around 40 missed calls from her everyday.
It’s like her full time job just to call us all day everyday. Anyways an
embarrassing moment happened this morning when I was laying on the
couch in my “G’s” studying and I knottiest the lights flickering on
the vp in a way that I did not recognize. I asked Elder Longhurst what
that meant and he didn’t know either so we turned on the TV to find
Yania there watching me on the couch. I then screamed like a little
girl and covered myself up. I asked her how long she’d been watching
me and she signed that she’d been watching me lay on the couch for about
20 minutes… Crap. Well that was really embarrassing but another
funny moment that happened today was when me and my companion were
talking to this Asian lady we met on the side of the road and this bee
kept flying around my companion, so he tried hitting in the air with
his Book of Mormon and when he hit the bee it ended up sticking to his
hand so my companion freaked out and chucked his Book of Mormon at the
ground trying to get shake the bee of his hand. This Asian lady on the
other hand had no idea what was going on and she just had this
terrifying look on her face while she repeated “you just threw your
bible on the ground!”. Me on the other hand, I was on the ground
laughing my buns off. The joke in the mission field is that if you
drop your Book of Mormon on the ground that your future wife will gain
10 lbs and Elder Longurst already drops his BOM more than anyone I
know but after this incident I’m pretty sure his wife just gained 50
lbs more. He didn’t think that joke was very funny when I told him
afterwards.

Oct 17thZone Meeting
This morning I had my first Zone Meeting and It was really good. We
learned the importance of getting members involved with investigators.
We also did this activity that was called “what are you willing to
pay?” Which someone was suppose to be a spiritual game but I ended up
having to do 60 push up and I don’t see anything spiritual about that.
After zone meeting all the elders went to this Chinese Buffet and I’ve
never eating more sushi in my life! It was pretty gross sushi but I
haven’t had it in a while so that’s why I ate so much of it. Anyways
that was lunch but for dinner we went to Marks house and he is a funny
older dude. He needs a women in his life so we convinced him to sign up forldssingles.com. Lol.

Oct 18thBye Bye Hair
Started off my day by tracking for the Spanish elders in their area to
help them build a “Spanish branch”. Everyone door that I’ve knocked at
since I’ve been here has usually been pretty nice and listened to what
I had to say but one lady yelled at us to go away right when she
opened the door and then slammed it in our face. As bad as I wanted to
burn her house down I held myself back. After this Elder Hancock (and
elder from my zone) and myself agreed to give each other haircuts…
Idk why I thought this was a good idea. I asked him to take a 1/2 inch
off the top but than he cut a good 2 inches off. He thought he was so
funny till it was my turn to cut his hair. He asked me to buzz a part
in his head, so I did, It was just 1/2 inch thick. Haha when he saw
himself in the mirror I’ve never seen someone’s face turn more white. He
definitely got it worse than I did but we ended up laughing our heads
off in the end. Later that night we were with all the Elders and some
lady approached us asking for money saying that her car was empty on
gas and she needed it. I don’t know why everyone had compassion on her
but she was talking about how she wanted to go to our church and she
loved Mormons and anyways she ended up squeezing like a total of $50
out of all the elders together. She was a super good actress
apparently because everyone believed every word she said and she gave
us her address and her phone number! But after she left we called it
and it was a fake number… I didn’t give any money but the rest of
the elders felt foolish after. Feelin greedy and proud right now.